Dec 31 Prodways’ Viscous Solution

The company has reorganized its industrial 3D printers into two lines: “L” for liquid resin 3D printers and “V” for viscous material 3D printers.

The “L” series, which includes the L5000 and L6000 models, is said to be a “complete liquid photopolymer solution for manufacturing”. The machines use moving DLP light engines to print extremely large high resolution plastic objects. The L6000, for example, has a build volume of 800 x 330 x 200mm.

The “V” series is capable of printing in highly viscous materials (or pastes) that can offer different engineering properties. In its 120 x 500 x 150mm build volume, the V6000 can print ceramics or even metals on its super-flat granite build plate.

The price? Prodways’ units go for €200,000-500,000 (USD$243,000-610,000), so they are not inexpensive. But the advantage they offer is size. Not only are the machines equipped with large build volumes, but their software is specifically designed to handle very large 3D model files. There’s no point in having a large, high resolution printer unless you can deliver high resolution models to it. Prodways has developed software capable of handling STL files in the “tens of gigabytes” range. That’s big!

Kerry Stevenson, aka "General Fabb" has been writing Fabbaloo posts since he launched the venture in 2007, with an intention to promote and grow the incredible technology of 3D printing across the world. So far, it seems to be working!

Kerry Stevenson, aka "General Fabb" has been writing Fabbaloo posts since he launched the venture in 2007, with an intention to promote and grow the incredible technology of 3D printing across the world. So far, it seems to be working!